


To Make A Weapon

by DJWillyShakes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amputation, Backstory, Blood and Torture, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Bucky Barnes-centric, Catholic Bucky Barnes, Gen, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hydra (Marvel), Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Needles, Non-Consensual Electroconvulsive Therapy, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 05:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3598161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJWillyShakes/pseuds/DJWillyShakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A one-shot dump on the making of the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Make A Weapon

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to my roommate for helping with the science

~~FEB 1943~~

            “I told you, Arnim, I am not concerned with _improvement_ —I am concerned with _enhancement_.”

            A very foolish impulse to correct Schmidt—more accurately, to remind him the two were synonymous—rose in Dr Zola’s throat. He swallowed it. “I—I am not sure I understand…We can stimulate cellular growth, and specify it, but have not been able to isolate the…oh, what were they called….” He flipped through a sheaf of papers half-attached to his clipboard. “Vita-Rays? Erskine used them to increase production of serum within the subject’s veins, limiting the amount that must be produced and shortening the time of infusion—“

            The Red Skull spun in his chair, staring him down from deep in the horrible, horrible crimson sockets. “I do not _want_ Erskine’s formula.” His voice was like ice, and the lack of expression on his bone-tight skin only made it worse.

            Zola shuddered. “O-oh…you don’t?”

            Slowly, the Skull stood, towering over his pet scientist like a monolith. “If I wanted Erskine’s results, I would have offered myself as a test subject, or made efforts to collect the American who received the only other dose. Have I done this?”

            “N-no, sir. N-no, you have not.” Zola tried gripping his clipboard to keep his hands from shaking.

            “I want a new formula. _Your_ formula, Arnim.” Almost lazily, Schmidt inspected the wig-model that he used to keep his facemask shapely, stroking the rubber-molded cheeks. “Abraham Erskine wanted to create the perfect soldier. He believed this would help the Allies win the war. But he was a fool. Wars are not won with men; they are won with weapons. The German army is now too large—we cannot hope to produce enough weapons. But—“ He grinned, and it was a nightmare. “We have plenty of men.”

            “I understand,” Zola said meekly, adjusting his glasses. “But if I could have a sample of Erskine’s notes—for the Vita-Rays, you understand—so I could then modify and _perfect_ his design—“

            “ERSKINE’S DESIGN _WAS_ PERFECT!” The Skull slammed his fist into the desk, punching straight through the carved rosewood as though it were tissue paper. “GO!”

            Zola flinched, skittering backward toward the door.

            “FINISH YOUR NOTES AND BEGIN INFUSING THE PRISONERS!” Schmidt roared.

            “Oh—“ Timidly, Zola raised a hand. “W-we actually have begun—“

            “You have?” Curiously, Schmidt seemed to shift gears. “How many?”

            “Twenty subjects, sir. All from the American prisoners, the 107th Infantry. They’ve been getting regular infusions—small doses—for the past fourteen days.” Frantically, Zola whipped through the mess on his clipboard to find the results. “And—oh.” His face fell. “Well, only three have survived. The initial dose killed about half, and since then, they’ve been succumbing almost every other day…It seems their bodies reject the genetic modifiers.” The Vita-Rays, he knew, would have helped soften the effects of the test serums, but he didn’t dare bring it up again.

            “Hm.” Slowly, the Skull lowered back into his chair, pondering. “But these surviving subjects, how are they responding?”

            “Two of the three have shown noticeable improvements—excuse me—enhancements—in skeletal strength, metabolic function, and reaction time.” Relieved, Zola tentatively started to believe he might not end up in quite so many pieces as the last few scientific consultants. “The third is showing no reaction thus far, though it may be delayed or asymptomatic. He needed a much higher dose of sedative to become compliant, as well.”

            “Focus on these subjects,” Schmidt replied, leaning back in his chair and tenting his fingers. “Get me results.”

            “Yes, sir. Hail HYDRA.” Heart still pounding, Zola turned to go.

            “Do not bring me a man, Arnim,” he heard the Skull muse behind him. “Bring me a weapon.”

~~NOV 1945~~

            Every day, Zola cursed himself for losing his test subjects when the Italian base had been torched. As he rode through the alpine trails, stuffed under the false floor of a cargo van like some stowed-away Jew, he did it again, mainly to take his mind off the unbearable itch on the top of his foot he was entirely incapable of reaching, and the fears that his decoy on the train might be discovered. By his wristwatch, which was mashed up against his left cheek, he saw that it had been an hour since they’d left the last rendez-vous point. Only seven more until the next; fourteen more until the safehouse in Switzerland. He sighed and tried to fall asleep in spite of the cramp beginning to bite at his calf.

            The truck stopped short, jolting him in his crawlspace. The driver and the disguised agents acting as passengers began talking, loudly and frantically. Mercifully, one of them opened the hatch and helped him out into the light and sweet, fresh alpine air.

            “Doctor Zola—Doctor Zola!” The driver had pulled over to the side of the road and was poking his head through the canvas back, waving a communicator. “The train—the engineer just called. The Commandos took the decoy.”

            He smiled, feeling that particular weight lift off his chest. “That is excellent news…is that why we have stopped?”

            “No—there’s more.” The driver flipped up the visor of his helmet. “Doctor, one of their own fell off the transport.”

            “Not Captain America?” Zola tried not to seem too hopeful, but he couldn’t help but think Schmidt might become much more pleasant if his arch-nemesis had happened to perish.

            “No,” the driver admitted. “One of your old subjects. The sniper—53772.”

            Zola stiffened. “Take me to the site.”

            “Yes, Doctor.”

            The truck bumbled and snorted up the mountainside to an outcropping of snowy rocks. Zola squinted up at the tunnel cut into the mountain, high above. The driver looked, too.  “Are you sure he survived?” he asked, shielding his eyes against the glare.

            “53772 showed no initial reaction to the serum _except_ enhanced durability,” Zola muttered, pulling his coat tightly around himself and picking his way over the slippery rocks. “He may not have developed the strength, nor the reflexes the Skull specified, but he is alive, and the Americans believe he is not, and he is the only test subject I have left.” He paused, scrambling to get his footing atop a particularly large boulder and turning back to the transport crew. “I would like to find him.”

            Murmuring in assent, the three agents fanned out over the rocks. It wasn’t long before one started waving and shouting. Zola clambered over to where the snow was spattered with red.

            53772 definitely _looked_ dead. He had landed on his left side on a huge, mostly-snowless rock, and his arm was twisted under him, poking out behind him at the wrong angle. There were streaks of blood radiating out from him in all directions, like a paint-filled tennis ball dropped on concrete. His uniform—the dark blue and khaki of the Howling Commandos—was coated in frost, blood, and gunpowder residue. His lips, cheeks, and fingertips were blue, his hair and eyelashes full of ice crystals. Blood was leaking from the corners of his mouth—but it was still bubbling.

            “He is alive,” Zola murmured. He snapped his fingers at the fur-hatted agent who’d discovered the body. “Turn him over.”

            The agent kicked 53772 in the shoulder. The subject flopped onto his back, but the bluish hand beneath him stayed pinned. The agent frowned, pulling his hunting knife and ripping open the sleeve of the Commando’s jacket to survey the damage. He recoiled instantly, gagging into the snow. “My God—“

            Zola picked up the severed arm gingerly and handed it to the other passenger agent. “Wrap this up. I will want it for tissue evaluation.”

            Shuddering, the agent complied, cutting off the rest of the mangled sleeve and using it to package the remains of the subject’s arm. His partner finished vomiting into the snow and straightened up, kicking clean snow over the mess.

            “Bring him back to the caravan,” Zola insisted, tripping back over the rocks. “Quickly. I do not know how long the brachial artery will remain clotted.” The driver grabbed the back of 53772’s jacket, dragging him back toward the truck.

 

            The whine of the bone saw echoed throughout the basement. Zola gripped its handle and poised himself over the stump of the subject’s arm. “Be ready. Remember—you must line it up exactly with the curve of the scapula, or it will fuse incorrectly and we will have to amputate again.” The tech waiting just behind him nodding, holding the red-hot adamantium plug gingerly in her massive welding gloves. Zola lowered the mask of his respirator and tightened the screws clamping the subject’s stump in place. Woozily, the subject let out a groan, eyelids fluttering. He screwed up his face once, then cracked open his eyes, squinting up at the exam lights.

            “Doctor Zola?” the tech piped up worriedly. “He appears to be awake…”

            Mouth still clumsy from the cold, 53772 couldn’t quite form any words, but he did manage a noise like a confused teakettle. Zola gritted his teeth and adjusted his goggles. “Eh…not to worry. The shock will put him out soon enough.”

            The spinning saw blade bit skin, and the subject arched up from the chair, eyes wide, jaw clenching around a scream that built audibly in his throat. Zola pressed down, forcing the hot blade slowly but smoothly through the surrounding muscle before burying it in the head of the subject’s humerus. The saw’s whine changed to a lower, pulsing grinding sound, and progress slowed. Paralyzed from the pain, the subject began to scream, a raw, desperate sound. His hand was clawing at the arm of the chair to which he was cuffed, wild and spasmodic. As Zola pressed further, the subject’s nails began breaking against the hard leather, leaving wide gashes for stuffing to spill out. The saw broke free of bone, chewing through the last few inches of tissue with ease, and Zola turned off the blade. A splattering of blood, loose tissue, and bone dust hit the floor below.

            He set the saw aside and carefully unscrewed the stump of flesh from the table. “It’s all right,” he found himself saying, smiling down at the subject, whose pupils were the size of pinpricks. “Greta will place the bracket now. That will stop the bleeding.”

            53772 only stared at him, gasping. His cheeks were drenched with sweat and tears, and his breath was fast and noisy, grating his throat raw. Zola picked out the few remaining shards of humerus and ducked out of the way so Greta could fit the socket in place.

            The air filled with the sizzle and smell of cooking meat. The subject screamed again, this time writhing in the chair as the hot metal fused to his skeleton, sending spikes of heat up into the remaining flesh on his shoulder. Greta held the adamantium piece in place for a few minutes, until the outer edges lost their bright red colour. Zola had just turned away to grab some oil for quenching when he heard the piercing shriek of metal being torn. He whipped around and saw the subject had not only ripped the entire right arm of the chair clean off, but had also torn through three of the restraint bands. While Greta fled for a syringe of sedative, he smiled and reached for his clipboard. “Schmidt will be happy to see you are developing into a strong weapon…”

            After a few more injections of serum, Zola had 53772 flipped onto his stomach and bolted down—this time with much stronger bands. Carefully, he slipped on the microscope-attachments to his goggles, taking the scalpel from Greta’s hand and making one long slice from the cusp of the adamantium bracket to the very edge of the subject’s spine. Two quick cross-cuts and he peeled back the skin from the subject’s back, dipping in with a cauterizing iron to stop the bleeding and leave the red, pulsing muscle clean for the procedure.

            The subject was crying openly, babbling curse words and sobbing raggedly into the head-rest. Zola took the forceps from another assistant and began soldering on each tiny golden wire to its corresponding nervous bundle on the adamantium plug. It was slow, tiring work. Three times during the procedure, Greta slipped in to give another hourly dose of serum to the subject. Each injection send the subject into another wave of shaking and muttering, and his fever spiked higher and higher. By the time Zola was laying the miniscule transmitters along the subject’s spinal cord, 53772 had completely lost consciousness.

            He woke again when they cut into his skull, the sharpened tube punching out a chunk of scalp and bone with a dull thud. Too terrified to move, the subject just sat and hyperventilated, his temperature fluctuating between 114 and 115. Zola pressed the tiny chip implants into two very precise areas in the grey matter while two of his techs brought in tray after tray of intricate adamantium pieces. The subject winced when the tube slid out, but he was more concerned with the contents of the trays, especially when the acetylene torches came out. Piece by piece, starting with the skeleton, the techs began welding and bolting together a prosthesis. 53772 watched for a while, flinching at every spark or scrape of metal.

            Zola frowned. “The nervous analogs have not been connected,” he told the subject sternly. “You should not be able to feel a thing.”

            53772 didn’t respond. Eventually, he tore his eyes away from the team by his side, resting his head back on the chair and closing his eyes. He looked almost peaceful. Zola saw his lips moving and scooted closer to listen.

            “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’—“

            Scoffing, Zola moved away to supervise his team of engineers. The subject appeared to fall asleep, presumably from the exhaustion and shock. He remained limp in the exam chair while the prosthesis took shape. The techs stretched gold filaments from the cusp of the shoulder to the tips of the carefully-molded fingers, welded the sensor-equipped ends to the underside of each inch-thick adamantium panel. Zola himself oversaw the implantation of the thorium core, the lead-lined capsule that clicked into place among the bundled nervous analog endings. While Greta injected the piping system with polyalkylene glycol, he installed a pump under the curve of the shoulder, just above the power core. The prosthesis itself could be removed and reattached in one piece, but for now, it was fused painstakingly to the cap on the subject’s shoulder, nerve bundle by nerve bundle, servo terminal by servo terminal. While the subject remained unconscious, two of the assistants inspected the enhancement for articulation and fluidity, pressing buttons on the podium that transmitted directly to the prosthesis. When every joint was judged to be in place, every wire judged to be sound, Zola pushed them aside and flipped the master switch.

            The soft buzz of the analogs clicking into place was drowned out by 53772’s screaming. He thrashed against the exam chair, once again ripping the restraints out of place. When he tore away from the leather, it made a sticky sound, and Zola could see he’d popped his stitches. Every inch of the subject that wasn’t metal was straining away from every inch that was. The prosthesis barely twitched, the panels lifting up and down, the fingers opening and closing almost calmly.

            Zola sighed and stuck the subject in the carotid with another round of tranquilizers in the hopes it would make him stop howling like a man on fire. Eyes rolling back, 53772 dropped sideways out of the chair, the cybernetic arm clanging on the concrete floor. Greta and another tech struggled to lift him back into place—surprisingly, the subject was still lucid.

            “I w-won’t…talk…” he mumbled, already-poor English hopelessly slurred. “N-no matter what…you do…t-to me…”

            “We do not care if you talk,” said a calm voice from the doorway. Zola looked up at the Baron, a shiver running down his spine. “You are worth so much more, in fact, if you say nothing at all.”

            53772 frowned, bleary-eyed, and tried to say more, but Greta put the nitrous mask over his face, and soon, he was out cold.

            “How strong is he?” Von Strucker asked, looking over the subject’s bloodstained, sweat-stained, inert form.

            “Erm…higher than that of a human in peak physical condition.” Zola scrambled for his notes, stripping off his gloves. “Not quite to the level of Captain America…But he is ripping through solid steel restraints, now. A few more doses, over the course of a month—“

            “We do not have a month, Dr Zola.” Von Strucker snapped his fingers, and two helmeted agents wheeled in a machine the size of a chest of drawers, bringing it to one side of 53772 and plugging it into the wall. “The Allies are growing wise. This base must appear abandoned by the end of the week.” Another team of five came through the door, carrying what appeared to be a cast-iron coffin with a number of pipes sticking out the back.

            “If I may—where is Herr Schmidt? I was told he would want to see the subject’s progress—“

            “Herr Schmidt ran into a spot of trouble with the Cube.” Von Strucker shook his head, strolling over to Zola’s work table and removing a phial of serum from the drawer. Methodically, he pricked the seal with a syringe and drew the evil-looking, silvery-green liquid into the barrel. “He will be back soon—with quite the story to tell, no doubt.” He approached the subject, feeling down his limp arm for a vein. “And when he is, I imagine he wants to see this project finished. Which means, Dr Zola, you must begin taking…a few risks.” The Baron emptied the syringe into the subject’s arm, making 53772 wince.

            “I…don’t understand.” Zola swallowed hard.

            “Infuse him with the remainder of your serum, Herr Doctor.” Von Strucker waved at the crew by the new machine, and one of the agents brought over a strange sort of headgear apparatus, spreading saltwater on the pads with a paintbrush. “I will take over command of his restraints.”

            “The rest—“ Zola shook himself. “No—that is nearly twenty doses. It will kill him—his body will resist—“

            “It will not.” The agent slid the pads over the subject’s face and head, clamping them in place. Von Strucker nodded, and the other helmeted agent pressed buttons on the machine’s face. The machine let out a high-pitched buzz and a sound like crackling flames. The subject began convulsing, the adamantium attachment jerking and twitching in kind. The Baron smiled slightly. “He will not resist much of anything, very soon.”

            “Let me go,” the subject was muttering. Eyes rolling in their sockets, 53772 tried weakly to pull away from the chair. “Just let me go.” He was shaking uncontrollably, breath rasping in his throat. “I never even wanted—to be a soldier. Please.”

            Von Strucker scowled, giving the agents at the control board the cue to send another barrage of electricity. “The serum, Herr Doctor. If you please.”

            “Yes—yes, of course—“ Zola skittered over to his work table and began transferring the remaining phials of serum to an empty IV bag. Behind him, he could hear the Baron smack the subject across the face.

            “Your name, American scum?”

            “J-James—“

            “Serial number?”

            “Five-three-seven—“

            “Division?”

            “I-infantry—“

            The spine-tingling sound of the machine’s electrical pulse came again. This time, it lasted for nearly a minute. Keeping his head down, Zola moved in and slipped a central line into the subject’s flesh arm, hanging the greenish IV on a nearby stand. Feeling the Baron’s eyes on his back, he set the drip to a near-constant flow and ducked out of the way. “What is that machine?”

            “One of the Fuhrer’s hare-brained schemes,” Von Strucker responded, watching the subject pant and squirm. “Put to a much better use than mere torture.” He handed Zola a manila folder with the Red Skull’s stamp of confidentiality on the cover. “After all, Herr Doctor, all thought and memory is nothing more than patterns of electrical signals. Controlling a man’s thoughts and actions is a matter only of controlling the patterns. This machine gives punishment for forming certain patterns, and reward—the absence of pain—for others. In this way, we can condition the brain, and in turn, condition the man.”

            The pulses came again and again, on and off, for hours, until the IV bag was empty. Then the Baron gave the signal to turn the machine off and sent the agents away. He watched Zola carefully as the doctor disposed of the empty bag and needle, then narrowed his eyes at the subject. “Why does he still convulse?”

            “The, er, serum takes immediate effect,” Zola explained, eyeing the subject’s temperature. It was beginning to peak again, closer to 120. “The changes occur on a cellular level. A single dose takes up to four hours to finish working.”

            “He has bitten through his lip,” the Baron pointed out.

            “Ah, yes.” Without looking up, Zola waved to his assistant. “Greta—“ The tech nodded, taking up a swatch of gauze and moving in to dab at the subject’s lip. Suddenly, Zola heard a yelp and a strained gasp. Greta’s eyes were popping out of her head, her fingers clawing uselessly at the adamantium ones locked around her throat.

            “Release her!” Von Strucker shouted, banging on the doorway to get his team back in the room. “Now!”

            The subject didn’t comply. The fingers closed tighter, and Greta’s neck made a few nasty popping sounds.

            Zola ran over, grabbing a screwdriver and attempting to pry the fingers away. He barely made it seven seconds before the head of the screwdriver lodged between two finger joints and popped clean off the barrel.

            Greta’s hands fell away limply, her head lolling forward, eyes staring lifelessly at the floor past ashen cheeks. 53772 let go, and she tumbled to the floor in a heap. Still shaking from head to toe, he looked down at the sleek metal, opening and closing the fingers. Recoiling from the new limb, the subject spat blood in Zola’s direction and choked out, “Wh-what is this? What—what did you d-do to me—?”

            Zola felt a twinge of guilt and was about to make a case, but the Baron cut him off. Moving closer, he laughed softly, batting away a swipe of the metal hand with his electrified riding crop. “You were a useless soldier,” Von Strucker hissed, grinning. “Your only worth to the world was your connection to Captain America—the only thing keeping us from remaking the world in HYDRA’s image. Now that the Captain is long gone, we will change you into the perfect tool for undoing all the damage he caused. Every weak-minded soul who believes they will change the world—every man, woman, and child he ever inspired, ever touched, and everywhere he spread his _infectious_ spirit... _you_ will eradicate them. And you will be a legend for it.”

            Quivering, eyes hard, the subject swallowed—and spat directly in the Baron’s eye.

            Von Strucker spluttered and backpedaled, marching to the control panel and slamming down the switch, maxing out the electrical output. The headgear sparked, the wires crackling with a chilling _kzzzz_ sound. The subject pitched and arched, skin twitching as though an army of cockroaches scampered under its surface. A strangled scream died in his throat, and when the Baron flipped the switch back, the only thing animating the subject’s feeble limbs was the serum attacking his cells, muscles twitching jerkily as they grew and tightened.

            The terrified medical crew watched from behind a partition as the Baron wiped his eye and grabbed Zola’s collar, growling. “Tranquilize him. Do not let him wake until I come to him tomorrow.”

            Zola nodded feverishly, panting. “Y-yes, Baron.”

            Von Strucker stalked out, but he would be back. Every day for four days, he came back and barked at the techs until they gave 53772 just enough adrenaline for his eyes to open. He forced a mouthguard between the subject’s teeth, after Zola complained about more lip-biting. He slammed the switch, watching the subject reel, and then the Baron had a script.

            “What is your name?” he snarled, on the first day.

            The subject croaked, “B-Barnes.”

_Kzzz,_ went the wires.

            “Where were you born?”

            “Sh—Sh—Indiana.”

_Kzzz_.

            “How old are you?”

            “Twenty—seven—next month—“

_Kzzz_.

 

            “Name?”

            “Barnes—“

_Kzzz_.

            “Where were you born?”

            “B—Brooklyn—“

            “Age?”

            “Twenty-s-six—“

 

            “Name.”

            “I d-don’t—know—wait—wait—“

            “Born?”

            “Pl-please—“

            “Age?”

            “St-Steve—Steve—help—“

_Kzzz._

 

            “Name?”

            The subject only stared.

            The Baron cracked a smile. “Where were you born? When?”

            53772 raised one eyebrow questioningly.

            “I-is that it?” Zola asked timidly. “Is he wiped?”

            “Wait.” Von Strucker beckoned over one of the lab techs, a skinny Swede named Leif. He slipped scalpel into the subject’s flesh hand and barked, “Kill him.”

            The tech shivered, squeezing his eyes shut. Slowly, the subject sat up, inspecting Leif’s face and chest. Then he looked down at the scalpel curiously, weighing it in his hand and disregarding Leif entirely.

            With a sigh, the tech relaxed. Then 53772 buried the scalpel four inches deep in his chest, just between the second and third ribs, piercing his heart directly. Von Strucker laughed as Leif hit the ground.

            “Excellent,” he muttered, looking the subject over appreciatively. “He has now become an asset.”

            A whooping alarm took the attention off 53772. “The Allies,” Zola breathed, unsure whether to be relieved or terrified.

            The Baron frowned. “Take everything of value and escape now. We will come back for our new toy.”

            “But—“ Zola gathered up his notes as best as he could, frantically trying to decide what of his research was most valuable. “How do we know they will not take him? Or he will not wander off?”

            “Because, Herr Doctor.” Von Strucker pointed to the coffin in the corner. Its lid was open, mist pouring from the supercooled interior. “I have arranged for him to be properly stored.”

~~1946~~

            “I expect to be astonished, _gospodin_ Skull.” The hard-faced man stroked his walrus mustache as he followed HYDRA’s immortal head through the underground halls. “I was not impressed with last presentation you made.”

            “I am sorry to hear that, Premier,” Schmidt said softly, glancing over his shoulder before swiping his keycard at a heavy cast-iron door. “I can promise you, this offer will be much harder for you to refuse.”

            “I find this hard to believe,” the Premier scoffed. “You Germans waste too much time on toys.”

            “What I offer you is no toy, Premier,” the Skull insisted. He led the man up to a railing that overlooked an arena-type room, set up as a multilevel obstacle course featuring all manner of laser-triggered traps, code-locked doors, and waves of robotic and unfortunate human guards. “Behold.”

            The man watched, stone-faced, as the asset was released into the room. He scaled a sheer wall to the third level, ripped out a wall-mounted machine gun before it had a chance to fire, and used it to pry away a chunk of pipe railing, which he then slammed into the control panel on the ceiling, shutting down the traps on the entire third level. A door opened, releasing a troupe of ten HYDRA agents who were presumably being punished somehow. The asset, unarmed against ten repulsor rifles, sent four of them screaming down to the floor below, repurposing their sidearms to put five bullets through five helmets and five skulls. The last agent had tried something of an opportunistic approach, lunging at the asset from behind with a nine-inch blade drawn. He came flying over the railing, between the Skull and his audience, the knife protruding from the back of his mouth.

            “Stand down,” Schmidt said over the intercom, and the asset froze in his tracks. “Well,” he said, turning to face his benefactor. “Are you impressed, Herr Stalin?”

            The premier licked his lips, obviously intrigued. He surveyed the damage, looking the asset over from his perch. “What is he called?”

            “The Winter Soldier.” The Skull grinned. “A nod to the Americans who so kindly donated him for our experimentation—and your use.”

            “Will he cooperate?” the dictator asked, suspicious.

            “Oh, yes.” Schmidt laughed. “To make a weapon, Herr Stalin, one must kill the man.”

            “What are your terms, _gospodin_?”

            “No terms.” The Red Skull shrugged. “Call him a gift.”

            “Then is true,” the premier mused, watching the asset with a pleased expression. “As I told your Fuhrer: you Germans have your supersoldiers, your weapons, but we Russians…” He laughed. “We need only our winter.”

 


End file.
